Henry Baerlein

What are the Macedonian Slavs?—The rift caused by religion—Versatility of these Macedonian Slavs—How foreigners have stirred up trouble—Austrian, Russian and Turkish manoeuvres—The deplorable Milan—Nikita the comedian—The great Strossmayer—Religious disputes between Serbs and Roumanians—The burden of the Obrenovic—A happy advent—Austro-Hungarian wrath—Their Montenegrin friend—Austria gives hostages to history—The dreams of an old realist—Very high politics—The riddle of Sarajevo—The miserable Macedonians—Ferocities of education—The storm is past.

A wealthy gentleman of Belgrade, one George Weiffert, who brews admirable beer, is said some years ago to have sworn an oath that if his wished-for ice, that was strangely lacking, should appear by Saint Sava's Day (January 27, New Style) he would adopt this old archbishop as the patron saint of his family. Another Teuton, of Hebraic origin, whom I met at Zajeca, had placed himself and his house under the protection of the Archangel Michael, whose festival is on November 21. The Roumanians of eastern Serbia seem, all of them, to have assumed this custom which the Serbs call the "slava," and those inhabitants, say of Pirot, who did not consider themselves Serbs at the time of their annexation would gradually fall into line with their neighbours and select a saint, if only because the annual "slava" celebration is a day of tremendous hospitality, when the peasant is glad to squander his savings in the entertainment even of persons unknown to him. And those who are in the habit of attending "slavas" naturally feel that they must have a "slava" of their own. It may also have happened in Macedonia that a traveller has been told by the very adaptable peasants how Saint Nicholas or Saint Alimpija is their house saint, a commitment which the holy one has but lately had thrust upon him. One would therefore do well to look for some other test, and not to follow those people who roundly assert that the man who honours the "slava," and no other man, is a veritable Serb.

WHAT ARE THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS?

If, for example, one wishes to decide whether a given Macedonian Slav is a Serb or a Bulgar—many thousands have been called and have, quite happily, called themselves both—we must use a more scientific method. Some investigators, such as Vateff, have made measurements that are not without value; others, such as Djeric and Shishmanoff, have published good monographs on the Serbian and Bulgarian name. We have had some learned dissertations on the language of Macedonia, as to whether the Slav dialects approach more nearly the Serbian or the Bulgarian literary language. But this question remains unanswered, owing to the imperfect manner in which the grammatical and syntaxical peculiarities of the Macedonian dialects have, as yet, been examined. Some people have argued that as the Bulgarian peculiarity of the postponed article is also found in Macedonia it follows that the province really is Bulgarian. But as the postponed article is found in a wide zone, which extends from the Albanian shores to those of the Black Sea, this argument loses in strength, for how can Roumania be called Bulgarian? Very possibly before the Slavs arrived that zone was inhabited by another people who left this characteristic behind them, though they left no documents. It is a logical hypothesis. And Barbulescu, the Professor of Slav Philology in the University of Jassy, said in 1912 that "the Serbs have just as many reasons for asserting that the Macedonian is a Serbian language as the Bulgars have to deny it." As it was in the Middle Ages, so it is now; the mediÆval language used to oscillate between the two, and it is sometimes impossible to tell whether an old Macedonian Slav document is Bulgarian or Serbian.... When we come to the ethnologists we find they have only written books which deal with certain parts of Macedonia. They have confessed that, generally speaking, it is impossible to say whether a man is a Serb, a Bulgar or a Serbo-Bulgar. These Macedonians were for centuries at such a distance from the other Slavs and were so thoroughly neglected that they lost their national consciousness, an attribute which many thousands of them, in the days of the vast, loose empires of DuŠan and Simeon, never possessed. Sir Charles Eliot, in his excellent book Turkey in Europe (London, 1900), says that it is not easy to distinguish Serb and Bulgar beyond the boundaries of their respective countries. He divides the Macedonian Slavs into pure Slavs, Slavized Bulgars and pure Slavs influenced by Slavized Bulgars: "all three categories," he says, "have been subjected to a strong and often continuous Greek influence, to say nothing of the Turks and the inconspicuous Vlachs," so that in his opinion it is rash to make sharp divisions among a people who have thus acted and reacted on one another. A large proportion of the Macedonians[53] have no knowledge of the race to which their ancestors belonged; and one is brought to the conclusion that it is much wiser not to use for Macedonia the two words, Serb and Bulgar, but to say that these Slavs became either Exarchists (in which case they were commonly called Bulgars) or Patriarchists (who were called Serbs). Basil Kanchov, a Macedonian, who is the most accurate in giving the numbers of the Slav population of the old provinces of Turkey, divides them not into races but religions. It is, of course, a mistake to think that on the institution of the Exarchate it merely received the allegiance of those Macedonians whose origin was more or less Bulgarian. Thousands of Slavs who were, or believed themselves to be, of Serbian blood passed over to the schism with the sole object of obtaining for their Church a Slav liturgy. There was little reason for them to hesitate, since at that time the names of Serb and Bulgar implied no national differentiation, but were used to designate the brothers of two different provinces. We find then that the Macedonian Slavs, vaguely Serbs and vaguely Bulgars, passed pretty indiscriminately, and of course without the least apprehension of the future, into the Exarchist Church, or else remained under the Greek Patriarch. Exarchists and Patriarchists were found in the same family: thus at Tetovo the priest Missa Martinoff was an Exarchist and president of the Bulgarian community, while his brother Momir Martinovic was a Patriarchist, and president of the Serbian community in the same town. Stavro, a well-known watchmaker at Skoplje, was a Patriarchist, whereas a brother of his, also at Skoplje, was an Exarchist priest. Ivko, a farmer at the village of Poboujie and his eight nearest relatives were Exarchists, his other relatives and all the rest of the village were Patriarchists. Many similar examples could be given.

THE RIFT CAUSED BY RELIGION

One may observe by the sequence of events in one of the Macedonian towns, what was the dire effect of this dividing of the Slavs into two religious bodies. Ghevgeli, a town which before the War had about 6000 inhabitants, will provide a fair illustration. In the middle of the nineteenth century the church service was in Greek and there was no school, but the Slavs were indifferent—and learning was regarded as a rather praiseworthy accomplishment for the priest. Now and then some one would travel to where the Serbian or the Bulgarian language could be heard in church and on his return to Ghevgeli be discontented with the Greek. This feeling was fanned by certain agitators from outside; and ultimately a Slav service was introduced, being celebrated in the same church as the Greek service and by the same priest. As he was unable to read a Slav language, the words were written for him with Greek letters. One should mention, by the way, that no Greeks were to be found at Ghevgeli—only Slavs with a few Turks and five or six Jews. A Slav school was also opened about 1860, with a teacher whose salary was paid by the parents; he used Slav church books and taught arithmetic and folk-songs. The Greek bishop started a school, but with no great success, and although it went on until 1913 it was patronized by fewer and fewer children.

The Slav service in the church became after a time Exarchist; as a sequel to which, to the dissatisfaction of many of the people, it was called "Bulgarian." The objectors had been to Serbia and sympathized with that country, and at Ghevgeli they were supported by about half the population. But the Bulgars were then more favourably viewed by the Turkish authorities.... A Bulgarian school was likewise opened a few years before the Serbian, which began in 1882. By this time the Slavs, largely owing to external pressure, were not content to have two separate schools; they were the keenest rivals, and the proprietor of the Serbian school, Risto Naumovic, was killed for no other reason in 1883. His successor, one Becirovic, who is still alive, was threatened that he would be shot within twenty-four hours, but his valiant young son—who was then a pupil at the school—found the komitadji chieftain who had uttered this threat and slew him. So both the schools continued, together with a Turkish, a Greek, a Roumanian and a Catholic school. The Catholic friars were supported by Austria and France; the Roumanian establishment, which was visited by not more than twenty children from the neighbourhood, was maintained by Roumania—the teacher being a native of Bucharest. In fact, there was a good deal of propaganda which between the Serbs and the Bulgars became violent.

What can be said for the Exarchists?... Some years ago the Albanians in the region of Monastir were asking to be inscribed on the books of the American Church, for they thought in that way to obtain the benefits of American citizenship. They made no pretence of having been impressed by other doctrines. A Church was in their eyes a sort of naturalization bureau. And when the Exarchists were rejoicing in their new-found strength and perceiving that this Church of theirs might be a corner-stone of a Great Bulgaria, they were so completely carried away that they bestowed an all-too-scant attention on the methods which they brought to bear. These methods of the enthusiastic Exarchists were altogether deplorable and succeeded in alienating not only the Patriarchist Slavs whom they freely murdered, but even in many cases the very Exarchists, who came to dislike the komitadji bands, whom they were required to shelter and to feed and to assist with a subscription to their funds. "Still more," says a Bulgarian proverb—"still more than if you have a boat on the sea or a Roumanian wife, are you certain to sleep ill if you have a property in Macedonia." As year after year went by and the komitadji men appeared to be doing very little beyond terrorizing the country, those who supported them began to frown. No guerilla leader presented a balance-sheet, and it was generally known that the famous Boris Sarafoff allowed himself, each year, a few months in Paris. This, he said, was due to him after his arduous time in the Macedonian mountains. More and more displeased were the Exarchist peasants—the Macedonian Slav is a very thrifty soul—and in the Great War one had the spectacle of men who called themselves Bulgars and concealed their sons, lest they be taken into the Bulgarian army. "If it pleases the Bulgars," they said, "let them come and liberate us."

VERSATILITY OF THESE MACEDONIAN SLAVS

If the Exarchist leaders had gone about their business with more prudence—but how could one expect political sagacity among a people which had not only been for centuries under the shadow of the Horses' Tails, but which at the time when the Turk appeared was no whit his superior in civilization? Very possibly the Balkan Slavs would in those five hundred years have turned in disgust from Vlad the Impaler and other exponents of Byzantine culture, if it had not been for the Turk, who ignored his raia's potential moral progress and did not think of regulating his natural cruelty. If the Exarchist leaders had been born different, then Macedonia might easily have become—as now, one hopes, it will at last become—a Yugoslav bond of union, instead of an apple of discord. "I used to be a Bulgar and now I am a Serb,"[54] said a man with whom I was walking one day in Monastir, "and so long as I have work," he said, "I shall be perfectly contented." How many Macedonians ought to echo his words! At Resan I stayed at the house of an old gentleman called Lapchevic and in Sofia I had previously met his brother, whose name was Lapchev and who was Minister of War. Until 1868 there was at Resan only a Greek school, so that the elder brother's education left him merely a Macedonian Slav, who could have become with equal facility a Serb or a Bulgar; the younger brother had the advantage of a Bulgarian school, but the disadvantage of having his Slav nationality narrowed down into that of Bulgaria. These two brothers should set an example, renounce the name of Serb and Bulgar, and call themselves simply Yugoslav. At Resan the Serbian authorities are certainly trying to smooth away these wretched divisions. No longer, as in 1890, does the little town support half a dozen schoolmasters who are nothing if not Serb or Bulgarian. Now the Serbs of Resan have retained not only the priests who were in office during the Bulgarian occupation, but the male and female Bulgarian teachers. In the winter of 1869 Ljuben Karaveloff started his paper, the Svoboda, which was in opposition to those Bulgars who dreamed of their country being freed by Russia and placed under a Russian protectorate. Karaveloff's hopes were centred on an independent revolutionary movement, and the Bulgars, he urged, could best achieve their political, as distinct from their ecclesiastical, freedom by associating themselves with the other Balkan peoples and especially with the Serbs. "What is required," he said, "of the Balkan Christians is union and union and union."

HOW FOREIGNERS HAVE STIRRED UP TROUBLE

If you stand, soon after daybreak, looking at the white faÇade of Sofia's enormous, Russian-built cathedral, you will perceive that whether accidentally or by some architectural tour de force, the upper part is a majestic face, the face of some old god, benevolent and quite implacable. The Bulgars never would deny that Russia liberated them and showered on them every kind of gift. But woe be it to them if in return they did not forward Russia's purposes. Hundreds of young Bulgars were received in Russia and gratuitously educated; the Church books which the Bulgars used, their ecclesiastical vestments and sacred utensils had usually come to them as gifts from Russia; both before and after the political emancipation Russia's literature was most assiduously studied. And a pious care was taken of the places around Plevna that were memorable for a feat of Russian arms; the people down to this day speak about "The Holy Places." All was well until the death of Alexander II. No, all was not well—for the Russians had, in their design to make the Bulgars their devoted Balkan agents, given them by the Treaty of San Stefano a vast territory which in gratitude they were expected to administer for Russia's greater glory. Yes, it may be said, but Russia was using the best available maps, and these indicated that Macedonia was Bulgarian.... Perhaps we have already shown sufficiently that the Macedonian Slavs are devoid of an innate national sense, but that they have Bulgar or Serb sentiments which are, for the most part, imported, thrust upon them or created by the propagandists. Very rapidly the Macedonian Slavs transform themselves into Serbs or Bulgars; according to circumstances they will or will not be faithful to the nationality which they have chosen. And in their wavering they have thousands of precedents—towards 1400, for example, a Slav chieftain called Bogoja attacked the town of Arta, and in order to gain an easier victory announced, the chroniclers tell us, that he was of Serb, Albanian, Bulgar and Greek descent. One must therefore be a little dubious of maps which ascribe the Macedonian Slavs to any particular nationality. Much more than the rival maps, it was Kiepert's that was used by the Russians and others for determining the Bulgaria of San Stefano. "It is the best map that we know of," said Bismarck, and Kiepert's ethnographical statements were completely adopted by British scientists and diplomats at the time of the Berlin Congress. No doubt a well-equipped foreigner could obtain more exact ethnographical results in Macedonia than equally gifted Serb or Bulgar observers. But not one of the travellers whose observations Kiepert used for his map was acquainted with the Serb or the Bulgar language, nor had any one of them travelled for purposes of research; hence it is not surprising that none of them perceived that the Macedonian Slavs have no sense of nationality and that "Bulgar" is not used there as a national term. In former as well as in recent times the Macedonian Slavs have readily abandoned one name for the other, the temporary predominance of either depending solely on the conquests, political circumstances and various events, internal and external, which give rise to certain sentiments and instincts among this people, easily transforming them into Serb or Bulgar aspirations. It seems clear that Serbia's existence as an independent State for a good many decades before Bulgaria was freed would render the name of Serb more disagreeable to the Turk; it is therefore not astonishing that in Macedonia under the Turks one discarded the Serb name in favour of the Bulgar. Without dwelling upon the more or less valuable remarks which were made by priests and monks and Turkish geographers and French explorers and German doctors from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and from which we can at least deduce that the Slav inhabitants of southern Macedonia were not fanatically constant to the Bulgar name, it would appear that in the nineteenth century the earlier deliverance of Serbia and, above all, the foundation of the Exarchate caused the Bulgar name to become the more popular. The Serbs were looked upon by Turkey as a revolutionary element, while the Bulgars aimed at an independent Slav Church within the limits of the Turkish boundaries. It is unnecessary to add that after Bulgaria's deliverance and her annexation of Eastern Roumelia, and especially after the rebellious movements in Macedonia, which had the moral if not the official encouragement of the Principality, there was less eagerness on the part of the Slavs to let their Turkish masters think that they were Bulgars. But in the period preceding the publication of Kiepert's map the Bulgar name was the more fashionable with Macedonian peasants. And by giving practical effect to this map in the Treaty of San Stefano the Russians did a huge disservice to the Bulgars. In the first place, they aroused in this young people such an exhilaration that the subsequent annulling of the Treaty at the hands of the Great Powers would naturally leave a rankling disappointment. Also the relations between Serbs and Bulgars were not rendered easier by the chief Slav nation coming down so heavily upon the Bulgar side in what necessitated a most delicate and scientific handling. Three Russian ethnographical maps on Macedonia were issued by the Petrograd Slavyansko ObŠtcestvo, which worked for Pan-Slavism and assisted Slav students. These maps—one of them is described by Kntchev, the chauvinistic Bulgar, as "giving the Bulgars somewhat more territory than they in reality occupy"—were lamentably superficial. While remaining unnoticed in the rest of Europe they exercised an unfortunate influence on the Balkan educated classes, who believed that, according to tradition, the potent "elder brother" would be anxious to decide righteously the disputes between the small Balkan nations. These maps were, no doubt wrongly, looked upon as the plans of Russian policy, and on this account the Bulgars became still more unapproachable for an understanding or for united work; it appeared to the Macedonian intelligentsia, whose hope was to see their country set free, that Bulgaria was the land which fortune and the Russians favoured. Except the foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Macedonia and the creation of Bulgaria at San Stefano, perhaps nothing contributed so much to the estrangement of the Balkan nations as these maps; for it was long before one could be persuaded that this Slav society had produced the maps through ignorance and false information, so that, as Professor Cvijic remarks,[55] "the educated classes in Serbia were as culpable for the pernicious effects of these maps as were the Russian authors themselves." And Serbs and Bulgars had good reason to complain of the manner in which Russia treated them.

AUSTRIAN, RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MANŒUVRES

While Bulgaria came from the San Stefano peace dazzled with jewels that she was not to clasp, the Serbs continued walking in the shadows which had, from the time of Michael's death, been gradually falling round them. No practical result was obtained from a letter which the Serbian Government ordered their representative to read to the Greek Patriarch, pointing out that only such parishes should be held as unquestionably Bulgarian which had formerly been subject to the Patriarchate of Trnovo, even as those of the Pec Patriarchate were undoubtedly Serbian, while those of Ochrida were disputable, since that region had belonged in turn to both of them. Small advantage accrued to the Serbs from their fidelity to the Greek Patriarch: in Macedonia they came to be regarded by many Slavs as foes to the new national Church, while the only desire of the Greeks was to use them for their own purposes. "There are no Serbs in this parish," wrote a Bishop when the Patriarch commanded him to permit the Serbian priests now and then to celebrate a Slav service, "there are no Serbs but merely Greeks" (in which official terminology the Serbs were included) "and hellenized Vlachs." ... The Serbs about this time were most unfortunate in warfare. Prince Milan tried to secure, without coming to blows, from the Sultan what he expected that his victorious armies would give him, namely, the administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the failure of the 1874 crops the peasants of Herzegovina and then of Bosnia were driven to desperation by the demands of the tax-gatherers. Miss Irby's eloquent description[56] tells us of the terrible state of these provinces during the years that preceded the outbreak. Taxes of one-eighth were demanded by the Governor, one-third or one-half by the Beg, taxes for exemption from military service, taxes for pigs, cattle and everything "you have or have not." One informant said, "I have seen men driven into pigsties and shut up there in cold and hunger till they paid; hung from the rafters with their heads downwards in the smoke, until they disclosed where their little stores were hidden. I have known them hung from trees and water poured down them in the freezing cold; I have known them chained barefoot and forced to run behind the Beg's carriage...." The provinces revolted and vengeance was wrecked upon them. More than a third of the population fled the country. Sir Arthur Evans[57] describes the refugees as a "squalid, half-naked swarm of women and children and old men, with faces literally eaten away with hunger and disease.... After seeing every moral mutilation," he goes on to say, "that centuries of tyranny could inflict ... who can go away without a feeling of despair for the present generation of refugee Bosnia?" The people of Montenegro and Serbia were profoundly stirred by the miseries of their brothers. But Milan vacillated, and when finally he took up arms it was without success, and five weeks after the peace signature Russia began the Turkish War, one of whose necessary antecedents was the recognition by Russia that the Austrians were not to be hampered in Bosnia-Herzegovina. (After the Treaty of Berlin had placed the two provinces under Austria's administration it is said that AndrÁssy, on his return from Berlin, remarked to Francis Joseph that the door of the Balkans was now open to His Majesty. But the Russian delegate, Prince Gortchakoff, had prophesied to AndrÁssy that Bosnia-Herzegovina would prove the Empire's grave.) One effect produced by this incursion of the Austrian eagles was a serious divergence between the Croats and the Serbs. By historic and by ethnic rights the provinces, so the Serbs argued, should be theirs when once the Turk had ceased to rule. The Croats, laying special emphasis on the religious question, were for justifying Austria's occupation. The Catholic Slav clergy, unlike the Orthodox, ranged themselves with the great Catholic Power; while Croat politicians of the school of Starcevic invoked other historic and ethnic sanctions in their endeavour to found, under the name of "Great Croatia," a State uniting all the Yugoslav lands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Thus the Serbs and their Croatian brothers were acutely in conflict. Never, said the Serbs, would that "Trialism" come to pass, for the Magyars would veto the formation of a Yugoslav State within the Empire, having a population roughly equal in numbers to its own. We Yugoslavs have nothing to hope for, said the Serbs, except from ourselves, and, being divided, we are ruining our common interests.... From yet another quarter was a storm-wind blowing on the Serbs. The Russian volunteers and officers had taken back with them highly unfavourable impressions as to the capabilities of the Serbian army, which they accompanied in the luckless campaign of 1876; also, in the opinion of the Pan-Slavists the Serbs had been contaminated by European civilization, whereas the Bulgars seemed, in the words of Professor Miliukoff,[58] to be the sons of an untouched, virgin soil, free from politics and ready to work, with all possible zeal for the "inner truth" of Pan-Slavism, while begging its protector to concern herself with the "outer truth." The Bulgars were, for these reasons, to have the preference in the allotment of the spoils of the Turkish War; and, owing to the conflicting demands of Russia and Prince Milan, Serbia did not declare war against Turkey until several days after the fall of Plevna, so that she could not hope that the Russians would show any special tenderness towards her national aspirations. It is difficult to see what Serbia could have hoped to gain from the elder brother, if she had been less dilatory; she gained from this intervention no vast gratitude from the younger brother. Men may still be found in Bulgarian frontier villages who were prominent there during the Serbian army's rÉgime. Some of the officers seem to have told the people that they ought no longer to call themselves Bulgars, since they were Serbs; but the propaganda was very mild. Serbian schools were opened here and there, but if no pupils wished to attend them, the schoolmasters had a holiday; and the occupying troops limited themselves to collecting signatures on addresses of loyalty to Prince Milan. No one, probably, thought that the addresses and petitions were very serious—no one, that is to say, except a Dalmatian publicist called Spiridon Gopcevic, who printed a large number of them in his handsome, illustrated book, Makedonien und Alt-Serbien (Vienna, 1889). With regard to Gopcevic as a savant—he says that all the Macedonian Slavs are Serbs—and there are equally uncompromising Bulgarian authors—the celebrated Slavist Jagic says that he is sorry for the good paper which was used for Gopcevic's book. Another of his wonderful discoveries was that the Macedonian Slavs are Croats. And one of his severest judges is a Croat, S. Jurinic. He gives, as if they were most valuable, these fatuous lists of signatures and informs us that some Bulgarian priests and agitators tried to prevent them being collected. A Turkish official did, it is true, show in too Oriental a fashion that he disapproved of these collectors—on July 16, 1878, he quartered one Cvetkovic-Boince on the road between Skoplje and Kumanovo for having obtained 5000 signatures; and after quartering him, the Turk nailed the four parts of his body, each with a quarter of the petition tied to it, on to four posts at a place where four roads met. But many of the more reasonable Bulgars appear to have recognized that these activities of some Serbian officers and others need certainly not embroil the two people; while some other manifestations of joy, such as when they pulled out the beard of the priest of Pirot, and after nightfall, in celebration of this triumph, illuminated the town, those and similar transactions were treated as the folly of exuberant subalterns; and Tako Peyeff of Trn, the spokesman of the little, far-away town and its representative at San Stefano, told me that although he refused to sign petitions, yet he said that if Prince Milan should visit Trn it was the duty of all men to salute him. Up to this time, then, there was no veritable friction—there was only the cloud gathering over Macedonia; and even when the Berlin Congress of 1879 adjudged certain towns to Serbia, as a recompense for the abandonment of any claims on Bosnia, this was rightly taken by most Bulgars as being far less the fault of Serbia than of Austria and the other Powers. It is strange, in fact, that this difficult passage in Serbia's history was marked by greater animus between Serb and Croat than between Serb and Bulgar—and the Serbs were standing in Bulgaria. Milan had not yet made his ill-omened remark that the road to Sarajevo went via Sofia.

THE DEPLORABLE MILAN

One of the direst misfortunes that ever came upon Serbia was Milan, her fickle, headstrong, extravagant ruler. He was, perhaps, no Serb at all; it had been given out, when he came as a child from Roumania, that he was the grandson of the younger brother of MiloŠ, but this statement was not universally accepted—he lived under the suspicion of being an illegitimate son of the Roumanian Prince—and at his first appearance before the SkupŠtina a certain Ranko Tajsic, a deputy, refused to rise. "I want that man's birth certificate!" he shouted. It is not surprising that Milan did his best to make, from that time onwards, Ranko's life a burden. If the Prince had been a more satisfactory monarch, his origin would have mattered little. Many of his attributes seem to his detractors to be peculiarly Roumanian, although it is true that extravagance is not unknown in Serbia, and this was the foible which his subjects, even when they learned the colossal amount of his debts, were most willing to overlook. It was only after his death that the secret treaty of alliance between himself and his paymasters, the Austro-Hungarian Government, became known; but the people, and especially the educated classes, were in opposition to his politics, and the conflict between him and the Radical party degenerated into a revolt that was suppressed by the sword. The leaders of the party fled from Serbia: PaŠic, who was for so many years to be Prime Minister, settled in Bulgaria where he practised his profession of railway engineer.... As a benignant-looking patriarch Nicholas PaŠic was for a long time the solitary Serb with whom the well-informed public of the rest of Europe was familiar. And of course upon his countrymen, whose fortunes he directed through years of shadow and sunshine, his hold was tremendous. "May God bless our dear old brother Nikky," says the peasant as he tastes his morning glass of rakia. There is no brilliance but a profound knowledge of human nature in this humorous old Balkan gentleman. It is not by brilliant oratory that he sways the SkupŠtina, for he merely thinks aloud; slowly and haltingly, while he caresses his beautiful white beard, the words come out in a very bass voice—it is a grave and confidential talk, although a merry gleam occasionally dances in his eyes. With such homeliness does he talk that he pays no strict regard to the complications of Serbian grammar—when he appointed a very able young official of the Ministry of Education to a diplomatic post some hostile critics in the Press asserted that he did so on account of his enormous admiration for a man who had produced eight books on grammar. As a specimen of PaŠic's parliamentary methods we may quote from a speech that he made in answer to one by the aforementioned Tajsic, who was an illiterate but most eloquent peasant. For three hours Tajsic had railed against the secret fund, the 30 million dinars that were every year at the disposal of the Foreign Office. At last when PaŠic gets up and very courteously smiles at the would-be reformer: "Well, well," says he, "as to what our friend has told us—the—how should I say?—well, it is not altogether wrong—in a way, the—what was his name?—when you examine the matter from all sides, there is—I forget the word—in a way, these non-public matters, you know—how should I say?—it is best—how should I say?——" "Are you satisfied with His Excellency's answer?" says Nikolic, the Speaker. And Tajsic puts it to himself that after all he is only a peasant and PaŠic is an Excellency and he must know better what one should do. This habit of stroking his beard used to be adopted by the Prime Minister when his personal finances were under discussion. Doubtless there were many who scented something scandalous in the fact that he possessed half the shares in the Bor copper mines, which had risen from 500 to 80,000 dinars apiece. He had bought them, as anybody else might have done. "Ah well," he was wont to say in that ultra-deep voice, "you see my wife brought them me." And a large contribution to his wealth was made by a farmer near Kragujevac; he persuaded PaŠic to buy from him for 1000 piastres—a few pounds—a meadow on which to put his horses, and subsequently on that meadow there was found an excellent spring of mineral water. Once for a change another political leader, whose Christian name was also Nicholas, thought he would pull the beard of PaŠic, and he did so very vehemently just outside Kolarac, which is a large restaurant in Belgrade. The Prime Minister was being followed by a couple of detectives, but he signed to them that they were not to interfere. "My darling old Nikky," said he, as he beamed at his assailant and grasped him tightly round the throat, "you and I are party leaders, so please don't let us quarrel. It creates an unfortunate impression, my friend." And it was some weeks before this man recovered, for PaŠic was then about sixty years of age and still in the flower of his strength. But to return to the disastrous reign of Milan.

NIKITA THE COMEDIAN

The discontented Serbs could now no longer, as in days gone by, look hopefully towards Cetinje. Rumours and something more than rumours were circulating as to Nikita's character. For many years that very shrewd person was going to gull the Western world which, meeting him on the Riviera, was enchanted by his picturesque costume. But if Queen Victoria and Mr. Gladstone had gone to ask the Montenegrins they would have found that he was hated, and not only in the Brda and the parts bordering on Herzegovina but even in old Montenegro. His adherents were chiefly to be found among the NjeguŠi, his own clan, and in the family of his wife. Certain English devotees of Nikita have actually been to Cetinje, have, as they proudly tell us, been embraced by him and have enormously admired his alfresco audiences when he settled all manner of problems to the perfect satisfaction of these tourists. Some of them, with a decoration or so and with memories of dinners and shoots, have written books that are a song of praise; and if Nikita's subjects tell these gentlemen and others, including members of the British Parliament, who have not been to Cetinje—but who know just as much as the travelled ones about Montenegro—if they tell them that Nikita is a ruffian, the answer will probably be that he who says such things must have a grievance, and that those foreigners who have criticized him, Miss Edith Durham, Baron d'Estournelles de Constant and Mr. Nevinson, are altogether mistaken. I do not propose to make a long and dreary catalogue of his iniquities, but only to mention a few items.... It was in Montenegro a matter of common knowledge that the wheat which Russia sent in large quantities for his famine-threatened people was not given but was sold to them by Nikita, the proceeds being shared by himself and four or five privileged families, the Petrovic, Vukotic, Martinovic and Jabucani. A member of one of these families became so affluent that he built himself a house, and a gentleman who still survives, Tomo Oraovac by name, wrote on this in the year 1878 a rather humorous poem which he called "The Red House." Oraovac was at the time an official, the intendant of the Montenegrin army at Kotor, and he naturally had to resign his post. The Tzar sent a certain General Ritter to examine the charges and, as one result, a Russian decoration was conferred upon Oraovac; according to etiquette it was transmitted through Nikita, and that personage gave it to a friend of his, a Turk at Podgorica. Nikita is apt to disarm one by the quaintness of his ways. Later on, Oraovac, who was one of Montenegro's earliest schoolmasters, organized the intelligentsia for the purpose of obtaining a Constitution. Nikita was not yet ready to grant such a thing, and his representative who attended one of Oraovac's meetings at Podgorica inflicted upon him two grave wounds. The reformer was then expelled—the powerful intervention of one of Nikita's cousins saved his life—his mother and both his brothers, more Montenegrino, were likewise expelled and his house was bestowed upon a certain KruŠa, who lived in it for forty years. One must add, with respect to the Russian wheat, that Nikita did not sell it for cash—the wars of that period had left the land in such distress that no cash was available. And so the wheat was delivered in exchange for bonds that would some day become payable. When the wars of the seventies were over, an edict was issued, and from end to end of the country, so goes the story, men had to sell their sheep and cattle and horses, their sticks of furniture, their land itself, to meet their obligations. Meanwhile the Austrian frontiers had been closed. No selling was possible outside the land, and selling within it was only permitted to certain specified persons, agents of the Prince, and at fixed prices. The profits were enormous; the country was ruined, and from that time date the great emigrations to America, as was pointed out by Mr. Leiper the Serb-speaking Scot in his admirable contributions to the Morning Post.... Nikita loved to bestow things upon himself. A famous hero, Novak VoujoŠevic, killed seventeen Turks in one day, and when he went, in consequence of an invitation, to Petrograd, the Tzar presented him with a sword on which were the Russian crown and the Montenegrin crown in diamonds. When the old warrior came back to Cetinje, Nikita said that such a weapon could not possibly be worn by a simple man; he therefore abstracted the diamonds and gave it him with false ones in their place. Nikita could not endure criticism, but those persons, including myself, who have charged him with inhuman treatment in the case of Vladimir Tomic, an intelligent young judge, were acting on faulty information. The tale was that Tomic, after being incarcerated, was soused with petrol and so badly burned that he lost his reason. As a matter of fact, this neurasthenic young man—whose imprisonment was due to his having wantonly insulted the whole Royal Family—poured the petrol on himself. Eventually, when Radovic came into office, he was released and, a few years later, he died in his native village.... The Montenegrin records are crowded with the names of those whom Nikita drove into exile for no other reason than that they had gone abroad for an education and would no longer be disposed to regard his methods as quite up to date. With the exception of the few favoured families Nikita was all against anyone acquiring riches; he deliberately put obstacles in the way of plum cultivation, and in such a state of poverty did he keep the Montenegrins that the Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, whose official connection with Montenegro dates back to 1878, addressed to Nikita an open letter with reference to the decreasing population, as to which the statistics had been destroyed. On account of the rigorous taxation a great many of the people were forced to migrate to America, from where they sent almost everything they earned to their unhappy relatives; these were compelled to pay up to 100 per cent. interest on the loans which they had been obliged to negotiate, so that they could not meet the taxes. And there would have been some consolation had those taxes been productive; but by far the larger part of them, as of the loans raised in Vienna (with the Boden Credit and the LÄnder Bank) and at Constantinople were devoted to the Court and its favourites, for rewards, journeys, decorations—every thing in fact, save the needs of the people. It suited Nikita very well to keep his people in dire poverty and ignorance. Such has been the poverty of the Montenegrins that it was no uncommon sight to see them cultivating so minute a polje that the wheat which it produced would give no more than half a loaf. And meanwhile they were not allowed to exploit the wealth of the forests. Figs, olives, grapes and plums could all have been cultivated with profit, and in the lower regions oranges and lemons and tobacco. But there was the deliberate policy to keep the population from enriching themselves. Occasionally their native wit gained for them a surreptitious triumph. Thus it happened that a poor peasant's son went up into the higher lands to tend the flocks of one who was more prosperous. By some means the boy discovered that the mountain torrent of his new abode dived underneath the rocks and subsequently reappeared and was the stream which ran past his old home. He turned this knowledge to effect by killing a lamb and throwing it into the water. His parents, down below, retrieved the lamb. Various other animals went the same journey, until the farmer ascertained what the boy was doing; and then the day arrived when the poor peasant, watching by the stream, saw the body of his son being carried down towards him.

Very few schools were opened; for example the Vasojevic, who are the most numerous tribe not only of Montenegro but of all the Serbian lands, had to content themselves with one school, built in 1882. In 1869 there was established a seminary with three classes, that was afterwards converted into a high-school of four classes; but both of these were frequently closed, the true reason being that the Russian subsidies given for the school were spent on the various needs of Nikita's Court. (By the way, at one time when Montenegro had this one high-school and one hospital the three sons of Nikita were in possession of ten palaces.) In 1869 the Russian Empress caused a girls' college to be opened at Cetinje. It was one of the best institutions in the whole Peninsula; many Serb and Yugoslav girls, in addition to the Montenegrins, gathered at Cetinje. This college was the centre from which education and modern ideas spread out to the remotest corners of Montenegro; in 1913 it was obliged to close—the Court had long been looking at it with a very jaundiced eye.... Russia, Serbia, Italy, France and even Turkey offered free education to a certain number of young Montenegrins. But only the sons of the favoured families were able to get passports to go abroad; there was scarcely anything Nikita feared as much as education.... And if one asks why no patriot could be found to kill this prince one is given two reasons, the first being that his semi-secret treaty with the Austrians provided that they should come into Montenegro if he were killed, and secondly, because of the old-time custom of vicarious punishment. In 1856, for instance, Nikita's father attacked the Pocara Kuci, burned their houses, and is reputed to have slain more than 550 children, women and old men, including the septuagenarian grandfather of Tomo Oraovac, on the ground that these people had set up a kind of republic, independent both of Montenegro and of the Sultan and declined to pay the former any taxes. These measures were taken against them in the summer when most of the men were with their herds in the mountains. Three children survived. The Great Powers protested, consuls were sent and ultimately the Pocara Kuci, who had always helped the Montenegrins against the Turks, consented to pay taxes. It was for these reasons that Nikita was never assassinated.

THE GREAT STROSSMAYER

While the Serbs of Serbia and Montenegro no longer placed any trust in their princes, they had good cause to give more and more of their confidence to Strossmayer, who remained for more than half a century at Djakovo and never, on account of Magyar opposition, became a prince of the Church. He saw that the Starcevic policy with respect to Bosnia was a retrograde step, since it was causing the Serbs of that province, who until the occupation had been on good terms with the Catholic minority and the Serbs of Croatia—about 40 per cent. of the population—to stand very much aloof from the Croats. This state of things was naturally very pleasing to the Magyar imperialist Ban, Count Khuen-HÉdervÁry, whereas Strossmayer's Yugoslav idea would have, owing to the intermingling of the two religions, a particularly favourable ground in Bosnia. It may be that Leo XIII.'s conception of drawing back the Slavs to Rome will remain a dream, but his and Strossmayer's policy of an alliance would have been a blessing to the Yugoslavs, and primarily in such provinces as Bosnia and Croatia. Negotiations were begun in 1882, between Strossmayer and the Serbian Government, with a view to establishing a Concordat. Serbia's Roman Catholic subjects—who, by the way, were not very numerous—would be placed under a patriotic priest depending not on Austria-Hungary but directly on Rome. And thus the fence between them and their Orthodox kindred would be gradually broken down. It would be foolish to assert that Strossmayer and his fellow-workers were able to make all the Yugoslavs dismiss their religious differences and remember their national affinities. Orthodox and Catholic Slav have for so long been divided that their approach to one another must often be slow and is liable to be interrupted by the manoeuvres of third parties. The Austrians were pretty successful, just before and during the Great War, in setting the Catholic and Orthodox Bosniak at each other's throat, and this antagonism will endure for a while in remote districts, such as in a certain village of the Sandjak where one found, in the summer of 1919, that the Catholic chief official and his wife were compelled to dismiss their Orthodox maid, since the villagers would not allow her to continue to serve in a Catholic house. But Strossmayer's statesmanship went a long way towards breaking down these barriers. "I have had to set my face against your mission," said von KhevenhÜller, the Austro-Hungarian Minister, to Father Tondini when this Italian Barnabite, in whom Strossmayer had every confidence, came to Belgrade. "It is one of our principles, inherited from Schwarzenberg and Metternich," said the Minister, "that we should exercise a sort of control over the Serbian Catholics by having them under the jurisdiction of an Austrian Bishop." When Strossmayer visited Belgrade, for the purpose of conducting confirmations, he was driven at once, amid the booming of cannon, to the royal palace. And if the negotiations were allowed to drag it was obviously not due to any Orthodox fanaticism. Talking of fanaticism, one had instances in Bosnia and in Slavonia, not long ago, of Catholic priests who discarded Strossmayer and endeavoured to get their flock to use a different pronunciation from that of the Orthodox. It was because he strove to bring them together that the great bishop was so heartily disliked in Vienna and Pest. It had been decided in 1883 that, unless he made his political submission, he was to be interned at the Trappist monastery of Banjaluka. But if he were no longer in a position to spend the great resources of the bishopric—to say nothing of the removal of his personal influence—the Cause would have suffered enormously. Therefore he listened to the prayers of his friends and submitted. "Be glad," said he to Radic, the Croat patriot—"be glad that you are not a priest." His successful efforts to bring about the moral and intellectual awakening of the Yugoslavs were most unpopular in those two capitals. But on the wide Slavonian lands and far beyond them one would find the sturdy farmers imitating his new methods—his own estate was so large that he paid 35,000 florins a year in taxes. The tall, thin prelate might be walking with you in his garden, telling you with simple eloquence—and in Latin, for choice—how much he regretted that Doellinger had not submitted, as did his adored Dupanloup, to the dogma of Papal Infallibility, when one of those painted carts would rattle round the corner and in two minutes this father of his people would be deep in a technical discussion with the peasant as to which of the episcopal stallions or bulls he should borrow for the improvement of his stock. When Strossmayer consecrated the cathedral which he had built at Djakovo he exclaimed that in the hour of his departure from this world his last prayer would be for the union of his people. "Almighty everlasting God," he cried, "have mercy upon my brave people and unite them!" As a very old man, verging on the nineties, with brilliant eyes peering out from under a great forehead and physically so fragile that in walking from one room to another he had to put his arm round my neck, he was still in every direction working to this end. Six months earlier, in June 1903, Khuen-HÉdervÁry had been recalled and, after his twenty years of oppression, the young men of Croatia, Catholic and Orthodox, in harmony with the Slovenes, were forming the Serbo-Croat Coalition. This was a great step in the direction of the Yugoslavia which Strossmayer did not live to see.

RELIGIOUS DISPUTES BETWEEN SERBS AND ROUMANIANS

Between Serbs and Roumanians of the Banat an ecclesiastical dispute was on the horizon. The Roumanian Orthodox body had suffered a severe loss through the Uniate Church, which captured many of the old Orthodox places of worship. Thus the famous little church of Huniadora, whose frescoes have been so glowingly described by Mr. Walter Crane, fell into their hands. This occurred in many cases at the wish of a small part of the congregation—and this part might consist of gipsies—whereupon the majority would be obliged to build themselves another church. The Greek Catholic Uniate Church was apt to lose its national Roumanian colouring and admit the Magyar language, which was occasionally resented by the faithful. Thus, as the Bishop of Caransebes (now the Metropolitan of Roumania) told me, there came into a church at Tergul, near Moros-Varshahel, a woman with a basket of eggs. When she perceived that she could not understand the language that was being used she put down her basket and uttered a loud curse, "May thunder and lightning strike this church!" she cried. And after the service had begun in a church near Grosswardein the wife of a clergyman pulled the priest's beard, while other ladies tore off his robes. Nevertheless this Uniate Church continued to exist and it was natural that the Orthodox Roumanians should seek in some way to compensate themselves for their losses. They had, as we have mentioned above,[59] been given hospitality by the Serbian Church and given the use of a monastery for the education of their priests. They now suggested that it would be well if the Serbs handed over to them a number of the Banat monasteries, and when the Serbs declined they started a great lawsuit at Buda-Pest. Professor Iorga, the historian, told me that he thought his countrymen were justified in that these monasteries were originally neither Serbian nor Roumanian, but Roman Catholic, being erected, in pursuance of their propaganda, by the French dynasty which the Hungarians had over them in the fourteenth century. Their nomenclature, said the Professor, is neither Serb nor Roumanian, they had no privileges from Serb or Roumanian princes and he believed that they only passed to the Serbs after having been abandoned by the Catholics. A line on p. 145, vol. i., of the Monumenta Vaticana HungariÆ (Buda-Pest, 1887):

"Item Stephanus Sacerdos de Beesd solvit I fertonem"

appeared to lend colour to this view, for the name Beesd might have been slavized into Besdin and this might be the record of a payment made, between 1332 and 1337, to the Pope. It is only fair to say that the learned Magyar Jesuit who presides over the episcopal library at Gjula FehÉrvÁr (Alba Julia in Roumanian) did no more than say that these surmises were possible. He was, as a matter of fact, much more interested in the political situation and in another book, the oldest printed Bible in Roumanian (of 1582 and in Slav characters) which, as he pointed out with half a sigh, was published by one Magyar through the liberality of another. The charming Bishop of Caransebes, as he sat with me one Sunday morning in his rose garden, did not receive Professor Iorga's idea with approbation. The Professor, he thought, was too fond of originality and he himself preferred to claim some of the monasteries on equitable instead of on historical grounds. They were founded after all, he said, for the people of the Banat and of those a majority were now Roumanian. (But in Caras-Severin, the chief stronghold of his countrymen, there are no ancient monasteries with the exception of some ruins. The Roumanians are not ostentatiously religious; they do not take kindly to the building of churches and in their portion of the Banat one usually finds churches of wood, some of these being 150 years old.) But another librarian, this time a German at VerŠac, poured cold water on Professor Iorga. Only one Roman Catholic religious house, he said, was founded by that French dynasty in the Banat and this was at Egres, near the MaroŠ, where the wife of Louis of Anjou built a church which remained Catholic and is now in ruins. The monastery of Besdin was founded in 1539 and a Serb-Slav psaltery which is kept there has, on p. 270, the following words: "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So that all people shall know when a beginning was made to build the monastery of Besdin. It was begun in the year 7058 from the creation of the world, that is 1539 from the Birth of Christ ... Joseph Milutinovic, archimandrate, built it, and his monks and the Christians helped him. Written by me: Leontic Bogojevic, administrator and monk." Beesd and Besdin, said the librarian, are from the same root, signifying that which has no bottom, an abyss, and the marshes in the Banat are numerous. The Beesd of the above citation is, said the librarian, a place between the rivers Temes and Berzava; Catholics were there in the fourteenth century, but the founders were Slavs. The burly archimandrate of Besdin, whose constitution had withstood twenty-seven years of marshes and mosquitoes, was extremely scornful of his adversaries' pretensions. "They wanted to prove that they built it! Not one stone, not a single stone! Then they argued that something was due to them as they had paid a part of the church taxes. We had invited them!" ... Most of the Serbs acknowledge that their monasteries in the Voivodina, as elsewhere, are not under present conditions as meritorious as in the Middle Ages when the people from twenty or thirty villages would meet there and listen to the blind guslar-player. Sometimes one of their few monks is a man of erudition, such as the well-known Bishop Nicholai Velimirovic or Ruvarac the great historian, who in thirty years freed his monastery from debt and left large sums for charities. On the other hand we have the archimandrate Radic, who ruled several monasteries in succession; he never drove with less than four horses in his carriage and he drove so recklessly that between eight and sixteen horses were rendered worthless every year. The Radical party desired, after paying fixed salaries to the archimandrates and monks, to give two-thirds of the rest to clerical funds and one-third to schools. But the Austro-Hungarian Government had an understanding with the clerical party and prevented the public from exercising any control over these funds. The twenty-seven monasteries in the Voivodina, Syrmia and Croatia could have supported three Universities, so richly endowed are they with lands; the Roumanians did in fact with some of the revenues of their one monastery of Hodosh maintain the Arad seminary. There is no knowing what other monasteries the Roumanians would have secured if the Great War had not intervened, for the Pest judges knew every morning which of the two litigant countries their own country happened to prefer.

What the Serbs of the Banat had, in the political world, to contend against may be illustrated by some incidents of the career of Dr. Svetozar Miletic, who after having been a deputy for twenty-five years was charged with high treason for having sent volunteers into Serbia at the time of the Serbo-Turkish War; even if this was true it can scarcely be said to have constituted high treason against Hungary. The witnesses against him were two forgers, released ad hoc from prison, his own witnesses were hundreds. He was condemned to six years' imprisonment, at the expiration of which he was in such a state that he had to be transferred to an asylum, where he died. The pitiful dodges of the dominating Magyar minority are by this time well enough known; it was their argument that certain villages, say ten miles from a town, had to give their votes in that town, while intervening villages of other nationalities were obliged to present themselves at a booth twenty miles in another direction, because if such methods had not been employed then the more ancient and more reputable Magyar culture would have been entirely swamped by the wicked non-Magyars. Thus the three million Slovaks in Hungary were represented at Buda-Pest by three deputies.[60] "Hungary," says the delicious Aubrey Herbert, M.P., in the Oxford Hungarian Review (June 1922), "Hungary was situated amongst reactionary neighbours, and any loosening of her hold upon the non-Magyar population threatened her very existence. The path of spectacular liberalism was closed to her...." The ballot was supposed to be secret in the towns, where the Magyars could hope to exercise an appropriate control; but even in the towns they thought it more advisable to take no risks. Some of the dead were permitted to vote; but only if they were faithful Magyar dead. And in Dr. Miletic's constituency no arrangements were made to ferry the living—on the large lake of Mutniatsa the boats were hidden and the voters were compelled to swim across.

Although a great many of his subjects charged Prince Milan with preferring his own and the dynasty's interests to those of the State, they should have taken into account that the Berlin Congress had left their country in a more than difficult economic and political situation. Not only were Serbia and Montenegro kept apart, but in the intervening territory, the Sandjak of Novi Bazar, permission was given to Austria-Hungary, of which she soon availed herself, to establish garrisons. Serbia was now almost encircled by the Austrians and there remained only two inconvenient routes for the exportation of her products to other countries: down the Danube, with the very high tariffs imposed by the Berlin Congress, or by the line to Salonica, which was in the hands of Austrian capitalists and ran through Turkish territory. Therefore Serbia's independence, political and economic, existed at Austria's pleasure; and this must be remembered in extenuation of the secret Treaty[61] (June 23, 1881) whereby the Serbs bound themselves for ten years to abstain from any propaganda or other activity against the Habsburgs and to make no political treaties with other Powers without the knowledge and consent of Vienna. Nor were any foreign troops or volunteers to be allowed into Serbian territory. In return for this the Emperor undertook to recognize Prince Milan as King whensoever he might be pleased to assume that dignity (as he did on March 6, 1882), to protect his dynasty from the Karageorgevic and to favour his acquisition of as much as possible of the valley of the Vardar. The grateful Prince affirmed this Treaty (on October 24, 1881) by a still more emphatic declaration by which he appears to have constituted himself a vassal of the Emperor. This infuriated the young politicians whose radical ideas, mostly imbibed at Paris and Geneva, were not balanced by the moral and social discipline which is the fruit of an advanced civilization. As a result Serbia was given over to chaos.... When Prince Alexander of Battenberg aquiesced in his Bulgars annexing eastern Roumelia it was said that he was violating the Berlin Treaty, but it is now known[62] that, in spite of the 1879 Treaty, this union had been foreseen and approved by Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary in 1881. Nevertheless Austria, which hoped to embroil and enfeeble the two Slav States, urged Milan to declare war against the Bulgars, and this he did the more willingly as he fancied that it would divert from him the enmity of so many of his subjects; but this war was such an unpopular enterprise that the King did not dare to mobilize fully, and with his available forces indifferently equipped and badly led, the upshot was that the Bulgars were victorious. While Austria had thus been the Serb's evil genius, Russia, by withdrawing all her officers from Bulgaria, again acted in a manner which seemed scarcely to allow her and others, in 1915, to denounce the Bulgars for their ingratitude. (The Russians, as a subsequent Russian Minister at Sofia relates,[63] so completely mishandled the situation in the early days of Bulgaria's freedom that they had only themselves to blame for the invitation to Ferdinand of Coburg which was made with the express purpose of thwarting Russian aggression.)

THE BURDEN OF THE OBRENOVIC

The fratricidal Serbo-Bulgarian conflict of 1885 has been well commemorated by a monument at Vidin: a soldier of the victorious Bulgarian army is depicted, prostrate in sorrow.... Milan, after an effort to rule with a new liberal constitution, abdicated and delivered his country to a Regency. These statesmen, who were aware of the secret convention with Austria, obstructed the development of the country and had recourse to a coup d'État in order to prevent a Radical election. Alexander, the ill-fated son of Milan, by another coup d'État proclaimed himself of age, summoned a Radical Cabinet and restored to the people their political liberties. But the enthusiasm caused by these proceedings was not often to be roused again by Alexander. The midnight coups d'État, which rapidly succeeded one another, were a form of government congenial to this gloomy, silent, friendless youth who blinked at the world through his spectacles and was incapable of seeing anything except the narrowness and the intrigues that were a part of his surroundings. More and more he showed himself a despot; he persecuted and imprisoned hundreds of Radicals, who were the overwhelming majority of the population. Espionage was rampant, the finances were in a state of chaos and Serbia's prestige was at such an ebb that, what with the disasters of 1885 and the reign of Alexander, the Macedonian Slavs were naturally more inclined to proclaim themselves Bulgars. Alexander annulled the constitution, imposed that of 1888, annulled this one also, superseded all the judges of appeal as well as all the councillors of state, married his mistress (an engineer's widow) and plotted, it was said, to nominate as heir to the throne his brother-in-law, a worthless young lieutenant. Meanwhile this officer and his brother were exasperating the people of Belgrade by commanding the orchestras in cafÉs to play the national anthem at their entrance, and occasionally, while they drank, firing their revolvers into the air. It was something more than personal exasperation which brought about Alexander's death. Those who participated in the murder were both partisans and opponents of the dynasty. Likewise the Austro-Hungarian Government was aware of the plan: Count Goluchowski promised the conspirators that Austria would not resort to armed interference, although two army corps were held in readiness to march into Serbia. Of course it would have suited Austria much better if the king, who seemed to be emancipating himself from the veiled tutelage accepted by his father, had been dethroned and kept by the Ballplatz as a restraint on the political waywardness of any successor. Some of those who entered the palace on the night of June 10, 1903, may have had their intentions changed by the panic which was caused owing to the lateness of the hour and the groping along unlighted passages—the electricity was out of order—but amid the band of executioners there may very well have been some who recognized that, for Serbia's future peace and welfare, it was infinitely preferable that he should not live. From practically the whole nation there came, when they heard of his death, a sigh of relief; he was killed by the detestation of his subjects. Yet there might have been, in the people's state of nerves, an outbreak against the actual murderers and this might have inaugurated a reign of terror if PaŠic had not walked up and down in front of the palace, wearing a bowler hat and buttonholing everyone he saw. "Most unfortunate, most unfortunate," he said; "they were both drunk, and so they killed each other." Meanwhile, machine guns were being mounted at appropriate spots, but they were not required. And Austria published to the world a few abominable incidents that accompanied the deed and followed it; these were almost wholly untrue, yet they served to make not only Western Europe but even the Sultan hold up their hands in horror. Abdul Hamid raised those hands that were dripping with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, and in exalted phrases, says Mr. Laffan,[64] lectured the Serbs on the undesirability of assassination.

A younger man than King Peter Karageorgevic, who now succeeded, might have been appalled by the difficulties of the situation. Murder and the rearing of pigs were universally regarded as the purposes for which God had created the Serbs, and years were to elapse before the little country could persuade the world that it was not inhabited by beings who approached the lower animals—and then the world perceived that it was, to a great extent, inhabited by heroes. When King Peter ascended the throne the Royal Families of Europe congratulated each other that they were not related to him, and they sympathized with Nikita of Montenegro for having this personage as a son-in-law. The indebtedness of Serbia—she owed 450,000,000 francs, a sum which swallowed a quarter of the annual budget—the corruption of the public services, the lack of industrial development, the rudimentary state of agriculture and whatsoever else of evil which the Obrenovic had done or left undone—everything was the fault of King Peter. A great many people were positive that Alexander had been slain by his myrmidons; for this foul deed he had been always plotting, from the time when he fought as a lieutenant in the French army of 1870-1871 (when he was wounded and decorated), during the Bosnian insurrection of 1876 (when he served the national cause) and while he was translating Mill's Treatise on Liberty. These liberal activities were held as the absolute proofs of the hypocrisy of Europe's outlaw. In a few years "old Uncle Pete," as his people affectionately came to call him, was revered by the men not only of friendly countries but even by those who were in arms against him.

A HAPPY ADVENT

He started by placing the government in the hands of the Radical party and by showing that his own position would be strictly that of a constitutional monarch. Numerous reforms were undertaken with respect to the finances, the exploitation of the country's resources and the reorganizing of the army, which had been debilitated by intrigue and corruption. So many tasks had simultaneously to be accomplished that the greatest Serbophil may have despaired, since the national qualities do not, as yet, include much power of organization. Is it not astonishing, therefore, that in a few years so much was done?—the army, for example, becoming so closely identified with the people that high Obrenovic officers felt that it was unpatriotic to perpetuate these dynastic divisions, and gradually they resolved to offer their swords to the State. More than one General whose abilities in the Great War gained him a high British decoration had once been conspicuous for his enmity to the Karageorgevic. With regard to Serbia's international standing we have the fact that in 1899-1900 it was impossible to arrange a loan of 40 millions at Vienna even though the entire railway system was offered as a guarantee; in a few years various loans, with relatively easy terms, were contracted for amounts of 90, 110 and 150 millions. One saw the peasant, who a short time before had sold his harvest while it was still green (zeleno) to the local usurer (hence called the "Zelenac"), now demanding every day by telegram via Belgrade or Smederevo the market prices at Antwerp. In 1895 Serbia had sunk to such depths that a Dalmatian leader said openly to a German journalist that the Yugoslav idea could only be realized by Bulgaria; in 1910 the "Narodna Odbrana" (or Organization for National Defence), that was not, as the Austrians alleged, a nursery for murderers but a patriotic body—it no doubt reminded the people of their brothers in Macedonia, the Voivodina and Bosnia, but at the same time urged them to cultivate the land more rationally, to visit the doctor rather than some old woman, to dress, sleep and eat in accordance with hygiene, and to take steps against illiteracy—in 1910 the efforts of the "Narodna Odbrana" had had such success that an inquiry, in which the French participated, found that out of a hundred recruits from a backward region 61 per cent. could read and write, 99 per cent. had some knowledge of the battle of Kossovo and the reign of DuŠan, while 82 per cent. could enumerate the provinces inhabited by their unredeemed brothers. The rise of Serbia was due to the happy direction that was now given to the virile spirit of the people; standing back to back in their own land, they were soon able to arouse the despondent hearts of their countrymen who languished under various tyrannies outside the national frontiers.

Those who in Old Serbia acknowledged their Serbian nationality were the constant victims of Albanian intolerance. One massacre followed another—that people which, according to some of its present champions, is mild and noble and misunderstood, with a particular aptitude for silver-work and embroidery—Miss Edith Durham asks that this poor nation should not be robbed of its country, its one ewe-lamb, which they love intensely and which, to everyone's admiration, they defend with great heroism; one cannot expect her, the Secretary of the Anglo-Albanian Committee, to refer to the numerous lambs, etc., which the Albanians, armed with machine guns, carried off in 1919 from a Serbian monastery near Tetovo; and in 1903 the Albanians, waiving their mildness, appear to have been more conspicuous in attacking others than in defending themselves. The monks of the old Serbian patriarchate of Pec were obliged to have Moslem and Albanian attendants, and it does not strike one as heroic when the monks themselves were murdered, so that the great monastery of Decani had perforce to be served by Russian monks from Mt. Athos. Far distant, indeed, was the day when those Albanians, who called themselves, after a river, the Fani, went to the assistance of DuŠan. They had been brought to a temporary standstill by the swollen waters of the Drin—"but," exclaimed one of their chieftains, "for a hero every day is good." They crossed the river and DuŠan gave them the name of Mirditi, by which they are still known, "mir dit" signifying in their language "good day." Not only were the Serbs compelled to don Albanian raiment—the Orthodox priest who ministers to Djakovica had, in 1903, to put aside his Serbian head-dress on leaving his quarter of the town; when making an official visit his head-dress was Greek and always in the surrounding country it was Albanian. Mr. Brailsford found, in June 1903, that the Serb peasants were tenants at will, exposed to every caprice of their Albanian conquerors; both at Pec, he says, and at Djakovica there was no law and no court of justice. In 1903 at MÜrzsteg, near Vienna, Francis Joseph and the Tzar concluded their Macedonian reform scheme, this rather futile arrangement paying, as one might suppose, not much deference to the Serbs. In Bosnia also and in southern Hungary the Serbs were in a humiliating position.

But the Serbs in the little kingdom strove manfully to put their own house in order and to encourage their brethren. What is known as the "Pig War" was waged, with astonishing success, against the Austrian Empire; by sending her live-stock and meat overland to Salonica, her cereals down the Danube, Serbia managed to break down the barriers behind which the Austrians had intended to control her economic life. The measures adopted by Stojanovic, the Minister of Commerce, were confirmed by the SkupŠtina and enthusiastically supported by the whole people, regardless of the accompanying privations or of any bribes held out by the Austrians. Thus when the Austrians reduced the fares on their well-equipped Save and Danube vessels, these were still boycotted in favour of the Serbian boats. One morning at Šabac a civil servant had embarked on the Austrian ship, while everybody else was crowding on to the much smaller, slower and less cleanly Serbian rival. The civil servant was being vigorously hissed, when he shouted across to his compatriots that as he was an official he had a free pass and he thought it a good plan to make the Austrians consume, simply for him, a certain amount of coal.... The young men of the intelligentsia were not idle. erjav for the Slovenes, Krisman for the Croats, Yovanovic and NeŠic for the Serbs, were eagerly at work to bring about the union of the Southern Slavs. They had some sympathizers in Bulgaria, but that country was too much oppressed by Ferdinand and the Germanic influence. Both erjav and Krisman were destined to become Ministers in the South Slav Parliament, which of course does not yet include Bulgaria. NeŠic, who was the diplomat of the Serbian movement, became Consul at PriŠtina, took part in the Balkan War, for instance at the siege of Scutari, as an artillery officer, and after some years found himself inside the town as Yugoslav Envoy. He is now Minister at Tirana, a delicate post which could not be in better hands. Ljuba Yovanovic was the idealist whose work was to arouse his fellow-countrymen by articles and poems. In the war against Bulgaria he was wounded and in hospital contracted cholera. On the day of his death he wrote to a brother of NeŠic, now one of Belgrade's leading lawyers; he was utterly grieved, he said, that brother-Slavs should have shed each other's blood, but he was certain that the day of union would come.

AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN WRATH

The first external result of Serbia's efforts was seen in 1905, when forty young intellectuals of Croatia, Dalmatia and Istria met at Rieka and, while accepting the union of Croatia with Hungary, called on the Serbian political parties to join them. Twenty-six Serbian deputies met at Zadar, endorsed this policy and formed with the Croats the Serbo-Croat Coalition, to which the Slovenes also subscribed. Francis Kossuth, the Magyar Opposition leader, welcomed with eloquent phrases the idea of an alliance between his party and the new Coalition; but when he came into power he forsook this attitude and exhibited the ordinary Magyar ruthlessness—he himself introducing a bill to make the Magyar language obligatory on Croatia's railways, and if a prospective Croat passenger did not know what name the Magyars had given to his old home and could not ask for a ticket in the Magyar language, he was told to stop where he was until he had acquired the necessary knowledge. In general, the Magyars had no reason to be dissatisfied with the sort of knowledge that the world had of them. In 1907, when a funeral pall was spread over the liberties of the Croats, Serbs, Slovaks and Roumanians in Hungary, Mr. Roosevelt, who was making his famous tour, gave many bouquets to "immortal Hungary," the "virtuous," the "chivalrous." The Serbo-Croats tried, by every possible method, to hold out against Buda-Pest. A Ban—Baron Rauch—was appointed with the special purpose of breaking the Coalition; and when the Serbo-Croats obtained fifty-seven seats out of eighty-eight, although one-half of the electorate consisted of employees dependent on the Government, an order was issued proroguing the new Diet.

In fact the Austro-Hungarian authorities had resolved to suppress any Yugoslav union. To the Dalmatians, who were in need of schools, roads and railways, they said, "Show us first that you are patriotic subjects of the House of Habsburg." Necessities, as Hermann Bahr has pointed out[65] were thus turned into rewards, which were to be the fruit of years of toil....

THEIR MONTENEGRIN FRIEND

The association of the Montenegrin Royal Family and the Habsburgs, which was to culminate in the barefaced treachery of Lovcen, may be said to have begun in the year 1906, when the two heirs, Francis Ferdinand and Danilo, met at Dubrovnik. A statement was issued, after a few days, which declared that Russia was far away and that Montenegro required the support of a Power whose help would be effective. If it had not been for the disasters of the Russo-Japanese War, Nikita would have found it much more difficult to direct his country in this manner. The Black Mountain had always thought of Russia as all-powerful; her defeat, when they could bring themselves to realize it, was to them as if the foundations of the world were rocking; in their dazed condition they agreed that it was well to have recourse to Austria. (When the Russian Minister at Cetinje protested, some explanation was given.) The financial details of the Dubrovnik agreement are unknown, but from what one does know of Danilo it is fairly safe if we assume that the whole benefit did not accrue to the Montenegrin Government. Danilo may in other respects have been an incapable young man—the advice of his unmarried sister, Xenia, was always preferred to his; in fact, her father had such confidence in this masterful woman with the pallid face and large, black eyes—the "femme fatale," as her enemies have called her—that he never gave an audience but she was present, either openly or behind a screen. Danilo's incapacity, however, seems to have stopped short, as we shall see, at the procuring of cash.

In that same year, 1906, Montenegro's first SkupŠtina assembled. Many people wondered why the autocrat bestowed a Constitution and a SkupŠtina upon his subjects. They for their part—at least the great majority whose knowledge of the world was gained by looking at it from their mountain fastnesses—could never for a moment doubt but that the Montenegrins were the grandest and the noblest of the Serbs. Hour after hour of peace they spent, disdaining to do any work more arduous than smoking cigarettes and drinking rakia, and talking, talking ... they would relate to one another what their ancestors had done by way of cutting Turkish noses, and unweariedly they would announce how their own blood was undiluted and heroic. If Greater Serbia was to be created it was surely they who—but Nikita, their keen-witted ruler, was not so certain. The Karageorgevic were no longer being treated by Europe as outlaws; by his constitutional methods King Peter had not only effected vast and needed improvements in his country, but was gradually winning for himself and it, if not a general esteem, at all events the first approach to that condition which for so long had been lacking. And Nikita was uneasy. He must also have a Constitution in his country and a SkupŠtina. Very well he knew that with the inexperience of his people, with their furious local rivalries and with his power of veto, he would not be greatly hampered by this SkupŠtina. It would be a semblance of modernity.

Nikita had no intention of allowing himself to be put in the shade by the Prime Minister. Whether it was Tomanovic, a kindly man of straw, or General Martinovic, an upright soldier, or anybody else—their function was to execute the royal orders. The differences which separate one political party from another in a Balkan State, and separate them very often into frantically hostile camps, are wont to be minute as to their principles, for it is largely a question as to whether you are a devotee of this or of that statesman. Two of the three parties which existed in Montenegro down to the Great War were both grouped round the Crown Prince Danilo, and apparently the sole difference between them was that no member of the MiuŠkevic Cabinet had been in prison. To a western European it would be surprising that the kindred Radovic party should also be on terms of close friendship with Danilo, seeing that it consisted of Nikita's dissatisfied relatives (one of these was Radovic's powerful father-in-law) who disliked the new statute which limited the Royal Family to Nikita and his children. Danilo protected this party for personal reasons. As for the third political party, that of General Martinovic, its principal plank was its opposition to the other two parties. Mita Martinovic himself was not much of a politician; he was a sturdy friend of Russia. Of his rivals, Lazar MiuŠkevic, a bearded, rather stout, medium-sized man, has a pious opinion of his own abilities, and is, or was, very proud of his friendship with Danilo. He need not be taken seriously, for he has no knowledge of administration, no political courage and no popular support. [During the Great War he was for a time the Premier, and after the War, when the other five ex-Premiers ranged themselves against Nikita, he stayed in Switzerland, where he tried for many months to make up his mind.] Andrija Radovic, a middle-aged man, whose tall, athletic form is crowned with the head of a grave poet, was erstwhile a favourite of Nikita's. Being related to the Royal Family, Nikita called him his fourth son, and when, after the fatuous bomb conspiracy (of which more anon), Radovic was lured back from Paris and sentenced to four years' imprisonment, it was not because he was in any way guilty, but on the ground that he knew what was going to happen and should have handed on the information. The real reason was that any party which was even to a mild extent in favour of reforms did not meet with the approval of the Gospodar. In his opinion it was necessary to reduce Radovic to obedience; and Nikita used to try, without success, to force the innocent prisoner to beg for pardon. Since he declined to do so, he remained incarcerated with a large cannon-ball chained to his left leg. While he was in prison he corresponded with Danilo, and on being liberated was received by Nikita—they wept in each other's arms.

Nikita fancied he was just the man to govern a progressive modern State. When he had the famous old warrior Pero publicly flogged by a criminal for having refused to degrade himself by flogging that same criminal, Nikita might plead that he was acting in the interests of discipline. When he confined his critics in the old Turkish fortress on the small, malarial island of Grimojuri, with the water oozing into the cells, he might plead that this was precisely the same curriculum as fell to the lot, at San Juan de Ulloa, of those who incurred the displeasure of Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican President—and Diaz had been almost worshipped (till his fall) by many Europeans. When Nikita drove one afternoon with friends of his to NikŠic and approvingly looked on while they destroyed the building and the whole machinery of Montenegro's weekly newspaper, which had departed from the paths of adulation—well, I see that his apologist, a certain Mr. A. Devine,[66] says that "in 1908 political passions resulted in the extinction of the organ of the political Opposition, Narodna Misao ("The National Idea")."

In 1908 there fell the blow of Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation to the Empire, thus placing definitely under foreign sway the central portion and ethnically among the purest of that Serbian people which was already divided into seven different administrations or States. Russia was still enfeebled by the Japanese War, and although she and Great Britain protested against the annexation, Count Aerenthal was able to gather this booty. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that Russia—apart from the ultra-patriotic Press—was violently excited. As M. Nekludoff, the able diplomat, explains,[67] his country was annoyed not so much at the Bosnian annexation as because there was for it no quid pro quo, no free passage through the Dardanelles. Poor Serbia was advised by the Great Powers to accept the fait accompli. She constrained herself to do so, but both she and certain folk in Austria were under no illusions as to the inevitable—a month after the annexation a Viennese newspaper announced that a conflict with Serbia and Montenegro could not be avoided. "The longer we postpone it," said the paper, "so much the more will it cost us."

One gets very weary of hearing the phrase "Divide et impera," which always occurs at least several times in the course of an exposition of Austrian policy. But we are bound to say that this principle governed her behaviour when she stage-managed in 1908 the Zagreb high-treason trial,[68] which was to drive a wedge between Serbs and Croats, in 1909 the Friedjung case, as also the Cetinje bomb affair which was to, and did in fact, alienate Nikita from his son-in-law, the Serbian King.

AUSTRIA GIVES HOSTAGES TO HISTORY

The Zagreb trial was conducted by a man who gave a good impersonation of Mr. Justice Shallow. "There is nothing to laugh at!" he cried, when a Serb doctor was asked whether he did not refuse to wear cravats because of the resemblance of that word to Croat. The whole farce resulted, not as one might have expected, in the collapse of the prosecution but in thirty-one convictions, varying in length from five to twelve years. The Croats, however, had thwarted Austria's schemes. They remained true to the Serbs, acted as their counsel without payment and helped to support the families of the poorer prisoners. At the Friedjung trial this professor, an eminent historian, produced a series of photographs of documents which were subsequently shown to have been fabricated at the Austro-Hungarian legation in Belgrade; he wished to prove that a political club in that town was guilty of a most extensive plot involving the Yugoslav territories of the House of Habsburg. Among those whom these proceedings and those at Zagreb brought into European prominence were the Pribicevic brothers, a very zealous family of Croatian Serbs, that is to say Croats belonging to the Orthodox Church. [The chief of these four brothers was Svetozar, a statesman whose Serbo-Croat Coalition party was, with the advent of Yugoslavia in 1918, to form the nucleus of the Democratic party. He then became for many months the all-powerful Minister of the Interior, a man with the appearance of a bull-dog in whose veins is electricity. The vehemence of his methods of centralization is supported and opposed by his countrymen with an almost equal vehemence.] ... But to return to the events of 1908 and 1909—the result of these two trials was lamentable from the Austrian point of view. More success attended her efforts in Cetinje, for Nikita was intensely roused against his son-in-law, and the European reputation of Serbia was again dragged down to the level of the day which saw the murder of Alexander and his Queen. An individual called Nastic whom, according to Professor Friedjung, one could only touch with a pair of tongs, accused the Serbian Royal Family of attempting to blow up their picturesque relative, under whose roof, by the way, Princess Helen of Serbia, his grand-daughter, happened to be staying. The bombs were carried in an ordinary portmanteau to Kotor, where they were discovered. Those who believed that Nikita, the arch-intriguer, was using this method for discrediting the Karageorgevic dynasty, can point to the fact that he never wanted a public trial, and it seems probable that Nikita—who was aware that a group of his young, discontented subjects was planning against him a demonstration, but nothing more than that, even though there are in the Balkans a certain number of people who incline to the throwing of a bomb when their British equivalents would write to the Times—it seems probable that Nikita may not only have stolen their thunder but have put the lightning in their pockets and have then indignantly revealed it. But the whole affair is wrapped in darkness and awaits the exploring of Austria's archives. The probability is that Aerenthal was at his work to demonstrate that Belgrade was a nest of vipers, so that Europe would not hearken to their protest when the time came for the House of Habsburg to smother them.[69] ... This same Austrian police-spy Nastic had procured for Nikita a certain "revolutionary statue" which that personage made over to the Imperial authorities, for use against the Serbs at the Zagreb treason trial. This atrocious deed against his brother Serbs destroyed for ever the last shreds of Nikita's reputation.

THE DREAMS OF AN OLD REALIST

Nevertheless he dreamed that from the mighty castle which looks down on Prizren he would rule the Southern Slavs; his eyes were ever turned towards the famous legendary land of Old Serbia. One essential was that he should be a king, and in 1910 with the consent of the Powers he assumed this title. The spider-webs of which he was so fond began to join Cetinje and Sofia, Cetinje and the mountains of Albania, while the master-weaver mitigated in his usual fashion the monotony of life in his poor capital. The Petrovic have such a way with them that—if you do not happen to be one of their subjects—you are in danger of being disarmed. Thus when they were basking in the goodwill of Austria and when Nikita himself, in the spring of 1911, had been splendidly received at Vienna, so that on his return to Cetinje he was welcomed by the whole diplomatic body, save for the Russian Minister, Count Giers, and General Potapoff, the Russian military attachÉ, who were exhibiting their Government's disapproval, this appeared to Nikita a favourable moment for—as the Persians would say—blackening the face of the Austrian representative.

It was said by many of his discontented subjects that the King of Montenegro's great solicitude for his own personal affairs caused him frequently to be quite dull in recognizing other people's merit. But that day when he received the Austrian Minister he was so very much delighted with him that he there and then gave him promotion from the second to the first class of the Order of Danilo. He had some months before conferred upon this gentleman the second class, with diamonds of paste, and when the Austrian now told the King of his appreciation of the honour being so profound that he had ventured to replace the other diamonds with real ones—"I am enchanted," said the King, "to see that we have such a real friend in you, and I propose to grant you," said the King, as he produced another star composed of imitation diamonds, "to grant you this, the most exalted class. Your Excellency has deserved right well of our beloved Montenegro. Give me back now that inferior decoration, and to-morrow, with due ceremony at eleven o'clock to-morrow," said the King with his paternal smile, "we will bestow on you what you deserve so richly, and it gives me every satisfaction, I assure you," said His Majesty.

The Malissori of Albania were also listening to the old man's blandishments. If they would revolt against the Turks—they were exasperated at the time against the Young Turk rule—then their families would be sheltered in Montenegro and their land, after it had been liberated, would be given independence. With the potent help of Ferdinand of Bulgaria the Turk was to be overthrown. But nothing came of all these plans; the Malissori were abandoned to the mercy of Constantinople.

However, in 1912 that which had been thought impossible was brought about: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro were allied against the Turk. "Onamo, onamo!..."

but Nikita, who had written these famous words and who had taught them to his people for a generation, had no cavalry—in the Montenegrin mountains they would have been of no avail—and thus, while his warriors were still some hours from Prizren, they had the mortification of hearing that the Serbs had entered it. With passionate desire they turned to Scutari. Nikita told them of the old Slav princes who were buried there—and to the simple-minded Montenegrins that seemed a good enough reason why 20,000 of them, the flower of the army, should lay down their own lives on the dreary hills that barred them from the town. It was hardly necessary for Nikita to allude to the wealth that would be theirs if they could gain possession of this outlet to the Adriatic. There in the plain at the end of the lake was the glittering white town, and if they could have seen themselves as clearly and their own inadequate resources, they would have refrained from the attempt. The minarets of Scutari, raised like so many warning fingers, failed to warn them. Their equipment was such that munitions and other supplies were frequently carried up to the lines by women—on the Bardonjolt no less than eighty of these were killed and wounded in one day. When the Serbs in October pushed through Albania to the Adriatic they offered to assist in the taking of Scutari, but Nikita shook his head. And it was not until some time after this that he accepted the co-operation of three batteries of Krupp guns, which had been meanwhile taken from the Turks at Kumanovo. But the Montenegrin army was not only handicapped by its lack of resources; the Crown Prince, who commanded a division, actually instigated a revolt among his own men. He had promised the Austrian Minister, Baron Giesl von Gieslingen, that the Montenegrin army would not enter Scutari, and the Government could only put a stop to Danilo's intrigues by invoking the aid of General Potapoff. The Turks were not wasting their time; they employed Austrian engineers to strengthen the fortifications, and thus the task had become far more difficult when finally the Montenegrin Court party availed itself of Serbian reinforcements. In more ways than one they were badly needed by the brave but ill-disciplined soldiers. "It is wonderful," they said to Major Temperley,[70] "their troops do not fire until an officer gives the word." Primitive men and a venal commander—according to Dr. Sekula Drljevic, who was Minister of Finance and Justice, Prince Danilo is alleged to have remembered, just before his country's entrance into the War, that money could be made on the Vienna Bourse by judicious selling and, after the declaration of war, by purchasing. The professional financier who on this occasion, thanks to his knowledge of the Montenegrin royal plans, is alleged to have realized, with his friends, the sum of 140 million francs, was no less a person than Baron Rosenberg, whose subsequent operations in Paris at the beginning of the Great War and in Switzerland during the War received the close attention of the French authorities.[71] These financial methods of Danilo's did less material harm, at any rate to his own people than the system he employed as a motorist; it was necessary that he should obtain the latest models, and it suited him that the Government, not haggling over the price, should take over his discarded vehicles. Similar hostages to gossip were given by Mirko, his younger brother; one remembers the smiles of the diplomatic corps at Cetinje when this young man dispatched, at the cost of the Government, a telegram of about 500 words to Austria, concerning a horse which he wanted to buy. Mirko, who died during the Great War in an Austrian sanatorium, was not one of those rugged and valiant Montenegrin mountaineers whom Gladstone and Tennyson celebrated; once when his father ordered him to come back from Paris, where he was copiously spending his country's substance on an actress with whom he had decamped, leaving his wife and several young children at Naples, he dutifully returned and settled down in his palace, a large, comfortable house outside Podgorica. Since it was less amusing than in Paris he remained in bed for most of the twenty-four hours; he would often spend an hour before dinner in superintending the removal of pictures from one wall to another, and having dined he would immerse himself in State affairs, which took the form of speculating as to when he and his heirs—Danilo being childless—would be called to rule over the great Serbian kingdom of Serbia combined with Montenegro. As to the fate of the Karageorgevic dynasty, this was wont to vary from night to night, in proportion to the amount of wine that Mirko had drunk.

These events occurred in 1913, and in the same year the Montenegrins entered Scutari. It was not brought about by force of arms, but by some arrangement with Essad Pasha, the illiterate and clever Albanian who succeeded to the command of the town after Hussein Riza Bey, the Turkish leader, had been assassinated on the threshold of Essad's house, where he had been dining, by a couple of the Pasha's men, disguised as women. Scutari was not to stay for long in Montenegrin hands; an International Force arrived, under Admiral Sir Cecil Burney, and took it over. One need scarcely add that the national sentiment of the Albanians moved the Powers at this juncture as little as it moved the Albanians.

VERY HIGH POLITICS

We have seen that Prince Danilo, before flinging himself against the infidel Turk, is alleged to have transacted a little business on the Bourse—a former Montenegrin Minister of Finance says that he may well have netted between 25 and 30 million crowns—and his royal father, though his methods often had a tinge of mediÆvalism, was not the man to rush, like some old knight, in succour of distress. When Serbia was attacked in 1914 he refrained from flying to her side. Montenegro "stood up spontaneously to defend the Serbian cause: she fought and she fell," says Mr. Devine. There is not the least doubt but that the vast majority of Montenegrins would have acted in this fashion. To some degree they had deteriorated under the example of Nikita—"A fish stinks from its head," says a Turkish proverb; but when their brother Serbs were in deadly peril all else was forgotten. And they were bewildered and suspicious when the SkupŠtina was summoned, seeing that the Constitution laid it down that the declaring of war was a royal prerogative. As practically every man was thirsting for battle—after all they were Serbs and incapable of committing high treason against their brethren—they marvelled at the King's delay. But to the politicians his manoeuvre explained itself; they recognized that Nikita had some secret arrangement[72] with the Austrians and that he wanted to tell Francis Joseph that the War had been forced upon him. From that moment he was playing a double rÔle; a Serbian officer was chief of the Montenegrin staff. "They have placed my army under Serbian command," he told the Austrians. "So faithful was I," he said to the Entente, "that I even took a Serbian commander."

In view of the persistent pro-Nikita propaganda which subsequently reared its foolish head in Great Britain, it is as well to note what were the sentiments of the Montenegrins towards their own country and their brother Serbs, and on the other hand how they regarded Nikita. Alone among the Allies the Montenegrin soldier received no decorations either in the Balkan wars or in the Great War, and yet he had formerly been so proud of such recognition that it had often been carved upon his tombstone, and when for one decoration there were two claimants a duel was frequently arranged in order to decide which was to be the recipient. But Nikita's rÉgime of corruption and intrigue caused these marks of distinction to be conferred more and more upon police-agents and such like, so that in the Balkan War, when the heroes could no longer be counted, when more than five standard-bearers fell one after another in carrying the same standard and when it was proposed to decorate en bloc the Kuci brigade, the soldiers refused to accept what had been so profaned.

THE RIDDLE OF SARAJEVO

On June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was murdered at Sarajevo.

In the course of July 1914 the Austro-Hungarian Government (wherein far more influence was exerted by Count Tisza, the wealthy and incorruptible, the vastly ambitious Magyar Prime Minister, than by the Foreign Minister, Count Berchtold, the courteous, somewhat frivolous man of the world who was doomed to execute reluctantly the orders of Berlin and be swept away by the resulting storm, while the brave and brutal Tisza, fighting for the glory of the Habsburgs and the greater glory of the Magyars, rode upon the storm for years)—the Austro-Hungarian Government in July 1914 dispatched to Sarajevo a commissioner for the purpose of investigating whether the Serbian authorities had anything to do with the Archduke's assassination. This official, Baron von Weisner, a very distinguished Professor of Political Economy who was a German Bohemian[73] with staunch German sympathies, reported in the same month that he was convinced that no accusation whatever could be levelled against Belgrade. (As a matter of fact the Serbian police, who had information that a plot was being hatched in Bosnia, gave warning to the Austrian authorities; but no notice was taken of this, not even when a similar warning was uttered on June 21 by the Serbian Minister at Vienna, nor were any special precautions laid down for the Archduke's safety. It was all rather mysterious.) "Byzantium, the everlasting and unconquerable Byzantium," says an Austrian publicist,[74] "had won another victory.... The Habsburg Empire," says he, "only wished to defend herself against those invisible and irrepressible intrigues." And after denouncing the Serbs for throwing a spark into the powder barrel on June 28, 1914, he accounts for their conduct by writing that "it is the tradition of nomad blood to tear down ancient, noble palaces, replacing them by nomad huts." What we know is that General Potiorek, the Governor of Bosnia, who had urged Francis Ferdinand and his wife to continue their programme after the failure of the first attempt at assassination before lunch, was never invited to explain anything—unfortunately for Austria he was placed in command of the "punitive expedition" into Serbia. Other incidents on which a light may some day be thrown were the very unceremonious funeral arrangements for the murdered couple (though this may very likely have been due to the High Chamberlain's personal hatred of the Archduke), and the fact that an Imperial Commission was sent to KonopiŠte, the Archduke's Bohemian estate, to seize his papers. It was there that he had lately been confabulating with the German Emperor; and Count Berchtold had visited the place on the day after the Kaiser's departure to try to ascertain what had occurred.... It was also at KonopiŠte that Francis Ferdinand, who was threatened with hereditary madness, had shot a gamekeeper dead. Knowing that the Archduke was as good a shot as he was insignificant in horsemanship, this had excited great attention in the highest circles, coming as it did after other scenes of violence.... In contrast with all these semi-mysteries it is clear that Serbia had nothing whatever to gain by the Archduke's disappearance, and although Austria had time and again endeavoured to pick a quarrel with her she had managed to avoid a situation which, after the two recent wars, would be perilous in the extreme. The Serbian Press, which enjoyed a complete freedom, was naturally violent in tone when it observed that the Austro-Hungarian Government was doing little to control the demonstrations hostile to Serbia. Houses of prominent Serbs were looted and gutted at Sarajevo, while similar scenes took place—with the connivance of the authorities—in other large towns of the Monarchy. But the Belgrade populace, uninflamed by their Press, conducted themselves with great moderation. The stories circulated in Austria-Hungary of several Magyar journalists having been murdered were absolutely false. Just as false were the rumours of a demonstration against the Austrian Minister at the funeral of M. Hartwig, his Russian colleague, although Serbian public opinion ascribed the sudden death of this powerful friend of theirs to a cup of poisoned coffee at the Austrian Legation. Hartwig has been criticized for his encouragement of Serbia's idea of expansion and for having fostered anti-Austrian propaganda—of course it was a very wicked thing, from the Austrian point of view, to think of the day when the Serbs might be joined to their unredeemed brethren; and as for the blessed word "propaganda," which covers everything from the mildest expression of opinion to assassination, there has been no responsible Austrian so reckless as to accuse the Serbs or M. Hartwig of having had recourse to methods that approached in wrong-doing their own notorious (and unsuccessful) forgeries.

Let us address three questions to those who carried on a calumnious campaign against Serbia:

(a) Why was the Sarajevo trial conducted behind a closed door? If the crime was instigated and perpetrated by Serbia, the Habsburg Monarchy, which at the time of the trial had already declared war on Serbia, had every interest in establishing with all publicity the guilt and the complicity of Serbian circles.

(b) Why were the evidence of the witnesses and the declarations of the authors of the assassination not published? It was only in 1918 that the Austrian Government, with the help of a professor of Berlin University, published a few facts taken from the proceedings of the trial. Although in this book[75] a great deal of material importance has been omitted—for example, the declarations of the witnesses as well as the last declarations of the accused, nevertheless that which we have before us constitutes one of the most terrible accusations against the Habsburg Monarchy. The young accused persons were not afraid to state, even behind closed doors in a barrack-room, some bitter truths concerning Austria-Hungary. One can have some idea of what they would have said in a public trial from the results of the famous trials of Zagreb and of Friedjung. All the accused persons, as well as their accomplices, declared that the decision to kill the Archduke was an act of their own personal will and that nobody incited or ordered them to make the attempt, least of all any authority of the Kingdom of Serbia. The crime was the personal act of Bosnian patriots who believed that they were serving their oppressed people. "In Bosnia," said the Minister Burian—"in Bosnia, there is no policy, there is only administration."

(c) Why did the Sarajevo police and Austro-Hungarian official circles conduct themselves so strangely with respect to the bomb-thrower Cabrinovic, a notorious anarchist and son of a Sarajevo police spy, who had on a former occasion been expelled by the police from Sarajevo? Later on, after the Belgrade police had been obliged, owing to the intervention of the Austrian Consulate, to allow him to stay in Belgrade, he returned to Sarajevo and was quite unmolested by the police, whose precautions a few years previously, at the time of the visit of Francis Joseph, had gone so far as to expel, as suspected persons, two members of the Bosnian Parliament.